Follow Us

Subscribe

NBA star shoots for social media success

Part of our series with L2

on 08 March, 2016 at 12:03

NBA star Stephen Curry has launched Slyce, a platform for athletes and other influencers to engage more efficiently with social media followers.

Curry came up with the idea when he began to find social media activity a “pain in the butt,” according to co-founder Bryant Barr. “It was too much of a hassle and there were too many pain points to make it worth his time to actually engage with fans in unique and authentic ways,” Barr told Digital Sport.

What Curry saw in the need for Slyce points to the growing power of influencers as marketers. Estée Lauder gained more than 30,000 Instagram followers after announcing Kendall Jenner as its new face, and the brand’s photos featuring the model register 20 times the engagement of non-Jenner photos, according to L2’s Digital IQ Index®: Beauty. When winning quarterback Peyton Manning told Super Bowl viewers he was going home to “drink a lot of Budweiser,” the brand scored$1.6 million in free publicity.

By encouraging influencer-fan interactions, Slyce could make it easier for brands to tap into this kind of engagement. However, brands must make sure that their chosen influencers spread the intended message. L2’s Insight Report finds that 20% of Spirits brand ambassadors have never mentioned the brands they represent on social media. Moreover, 10% do not even have a social media presence.